New Facebook App Aims to do Away With Texting?

By IBT Staff Reporter08/10/11 AT 7:27 AM

Mark Zuckerberg Photo: Reuters

Facebook has come up with a new instant messaging service for mobile phones. It was announced on Tuesday on the company's blog. This application for iPhones and Android devices allows the users to contact their individual Facebook friends or group of people. As of now it is only available in the United States but soon it will be rolled out in other countries.

The spotlight now is on mobile messaging as the London Rioters had used that to coordinate their movements. This new innovation from Facebook plans to do away with texting.

The application, Facebook Messenger, is an extenstion of Facebook's current messaging system which allows users to communicate within Facebook. The new application in question will allow Facebook users to send text messages between phones. The messages will still get stored their respective message centres in their Facebook page. It is also capable of group texting and will also include location information.

This application is a result of Facebook's acquisition of Beluga, a mobile based group chat application founded by three ex-Googlers. The "modern messaging system", according to Mark Zuckerberg, wrangles all the private communication between two users into one individual thread. Facebook's 750 million users already have the ability to send messages through the website and on Facebook's original smartphone application.

Its release timing suggests a direct response to Google+ and its huddle feature.

Facebook had launched its chat service in 2008 and followed up with a unified messaging system last year. Recently it announced a partnership with Skype and introduced video chat through its website. While Facebook repeatedly denies that the company's recent flurry of innovations are a response to Google+, the timings are hard to ignore.

With more than 25 million users in just a little over a month for Google+, looks like Facebook is feeling the pressure. Google+ on the other hand released an update to its own application this week with increased functionality and iPad compatibility. However, with the release of this new mobile chat, Facebook jumps miles ahead of Google+.

The messaging application is available for download in the Android market or Apple's Application store.